Money and politics. Servant leadership and mentoring. Tight budgets. Dedicated problem-solvers. No respect. The best job in the world.
Reading the comments from respondents to the EHS Today 2024 National Safety & Salary Survey is a fascinating experience, thanks to the wide range of reactions from safety professionals when we ask them to describe the current state of workplace safety. We invite all respondents to share—anonymously—their thoughts on their job situation, the industry, professional challenges they’ve encountered, and anything else they’d like to mention. We’ve been conducting this survey for many years so some of the themes are predictable and recurring: the salary is too low, the workload is too heavy, workers aren’t committed to a safety culture. Earlier this decade, as you would expect, many of the comments were about protecting the workforce during a pandemic. And every year, it seems like attracting and keeping new talent to the safety profession just keeps getting harder.
Perhaps because 2024 is an election year, an emerging theme among respondents is the impact of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) on the workforce. Apparently, DEI is either the worst idea ever to be perpetrated on the American public, or the best chance companies have to ensure fresh perspectives replace stale, “not invented here” mindsets. Two-thirds (67%) of all respondents indicated that their companies currently have DEI initiatives in place, although given the recent shift away from DEI from a number of prominent companies (including Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, John Deere, Lowe’s and Tractor Supply), one has to wonder if the acronym “DEI” will be replaced by some yet-to-be-mainstreamed new buzzword.
In any event, this is my cue to step aside and offer a glimpse into the comments your fellow safety leaders shared with us in the survey.
• The safety profession has done a good job at moving the perceived role of safety cop to a professional role necessary for organizational success across most industries. However, we need to do a better job at educating against the silver bullet that is going to solve all of an organization’s safety problems.
• One of the biggest obstacles to building effective safety cultures in industry today are DEI initiatives. While on paper it seemed like the right thing to do, in reality DEI harms the overall workforce and creates toxic work environments because it requires people to be hired and promoted based upon their demographic information rather than their skill/knowledge/experience levels.
• The EHS profession is strong and has been a rewarding career. It will always have its challenges but I am feeling and seeing a movement forward with accepting new technology and moving past the old traditional way of safety.
• EHS people burn out faster because of all the stress we’re under and having success defined by a lack of negative events.
• Safety continues to be more visible among all companies. Safety appears to be a driving force that perhaps was not always apparent for some organizations, but at the end of the day the same thing remains the constant: people are the most important asset and investment within any organization, and communication on a personal level is the key to ensuring that safety is established and sustained as a top priority.
• It’s hard to have “wins” in the EHS realm. It’s a good day when “nothing happens”—no one got hurt, we didn’t get fined, we didn’t have a failure.
• With the increase of technology and various regulations, why are we not seeing a more dramatic decline in workplace injuries/fatalities?
• I feel incredibly fortunate to work with my team to improve safety every day. We have such an important job that is sometimes rather thankless and unnoticed. Good safety is, unfortunately, often invisible. We are challenged every day to continuously improve ourselves and our working conditions, but it can be easy to only notice when something goes wrong. For all those looking to get into the field, I highly encourage you to immediately get a sponsor or mentor to help you understand your work environment and the culture that is present.
• EHS is a rewarding yet challenging career path. It takes a plethora of skills to master it effectively.
Indeed, “plethora of skills” might be an understatement, given how many tasks and responsibilities a typical EHS professional has to manage, not to mention the ever-expanding number of rules and regulations they have to comply with, based on their industries and locations. One role every EHS professional has in common, though, is the ultimate one: Ensuring the health and safety of every worker, every day.
